AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Lycian This movie depicts a sexual abuse of a male child by his "friends" who help him with his tennis training and school exams.The child has three elder "friends", one of them is a female. His mother and father are far away and he is alone with "them".There are 5 abuses depicted in the movie which take place when the child is in the "protection" of those elders.At first, the child is exposed to a sexual discussion in which the "elders" try to indoctrinate him about "infidelity" and they try to convince him to have sex with one of them.In the second, an elder, finally forces and convinces him to have sex with her while the child is drunk. The child's eyes are tied. Other two people watch him at that abuse.The third is a homosexual child abuse. While the second abuse is continuing, one of the male elders "take turn" and abuse him. At that moment, the child doesn't know a male is giving blow-job to him. He thinks a woman is doing it.The fourth is another homosexual child abuse. The second elder, who helps with exams, pushes to, convinces, and gives the boy a blow-job while the boy is trying to study to his exams.The fifth is again another homosexual child abuse. Like the previous, same elder "gay" person first gives him a blow-job then he penetrates the boy making it an "anal intercourse with a child".The elders use/abuse "Position of trust" to convince and push him to have sex with each of them.When the child accuses them for abusing him, the last abuser accuses him back with being an "opportunist". The movie takes side with the elders and it is depicted as if it is "normal" for elders to have sex with a child.The last guy says "I never did anything that you refused" or something like "I never forced you to do anything." And the child is showed as walking back into house as a justification of all this sexual abuse.I think producers, writers, and directors of this movie think that it is normal for an elder to have sex with a child if he or she doesn't "refuse." They should have known that a child isn't equipped with mental competency to cope with child abusers. You can't justify having sex with a child by saying "he/she didn't say no!" This is a crime against humanity.I condemn who contributed to this movie.

jm10701 Although I can't say I liked this movie, I'm giving it a fairly high rating (six stars) because what it does it does very effectively. I had to keep reminding myself that the creeps in this movie are not real people, which means the ones who made it did a good job.Unlike some other reviewers, the sexual element didn't affect me much either way. I neither approve nor disapprove of unrelated adults coaching an effectively orphaned teenage boy in the arts and sciences of sex, any form of sex he's interested in experiencing. If he's old enough to do it, and if he's interested, then it's okay. If God hadn't wanted adolescents to be sexually active he could easily have designed them to mature sexually at a later age, but he didn't.But what does bother me a great deal in this movie is the extraordinarily selfish way the adults treat the adolescents. They are cruel, shallow, snide, petty and totally self-absorbed creeps, and they push their creepiness aggressively onto the emotionally vulnerable adolescents. That emotional abuse is what I find repellent. The fact that Jonas and Delphine are children (and they ARE children emotionally, even though they are not children physically) is almost incidental.Pierre, Nathalie and Didier are bullies, and if their victims had been people of any age, even people their own age who were less aggressively arrogant than they are - and even if the focus had been on something besides sex: on money or looks or physical fitness or social class or something else - their behavior would have been just as despicable as it was in this movie. They are bullies, and bullies are always despicable.But the creepiness is so pervasive and so effectively portrayed that the director and writers MUST have done it intentionally. We must be SUPPOSED to despise these people, and we do. So this movie is in the odd class of well made movies that are intentionally unpleasant to watch because they're about despicable characters. Dennis Hopper was in many movies like that.

adamsoch-1 Let's get something straight: the English translation of the title "Eleve Libre" is very, very wrong. It will confuse the viewer and it does not do justice to this sensitive, well-made, subtle work of art. "Free Student" is a 'mot à mot' translation but, if I invoke the creative goddess, I would be inspired and call the film: "Student with a Choice". The alternatives were always available to this 17 year old "not so keen to study" a talented tennis player who besides school, tennis, friends and family, also has to deal with sex, because nature was calling him to do so. But sex is something our society is NOT taking very seriously, besides saying: Just don't do it, or it is something shameful, dirty and embarrassing. Well, society got these erroneous notions from the old, and misguided religious texts, and most people are stuck with them even today. Sex is life, sex is normal, sex is beautiful and important in this unorthodox, well written, directed and edited film. The film is perfectly paced, it has a pleasant rhythm like a sexual act or better yet, like Ravel's Bolero; it starts slowly and it calmly arrives to a climax just in time for you to have lots of honest and uncommon questions. This film is also utterly sincere, open and nonjudgmental; it makes us uncomfortable, because the approach to life in general is different to what we are accustomed to. If you are not willing to let the wind of the "atypical" caress you, then this film is not for you, but if you are willing to see a group of people struggling with life in a very different way that will create discussion after the credits are rolling, get this gripping and attention-grabbing film. Jonas is an adorable, charming and open-minded talented teenager who is privately tutored not only in math, chemistry and geography but also the art of freethinking, going steady with his girlfriend and the art of sex. In a very crucial moment, his mother comes to visit and asks Jonas if all is well and if there is anything she can do for him, but he assures her that everything is fine and that he likes his private lessons.There are many layers and metaphors in this linear and simple story with extremely complex issues or unspoken topics, such as the sexual awakening of teenagers today. Jonas is quite sure about his sexuality and his attraction to the opposite sex, but open to experimentation with his adult friends when the time is right. In life, how do we know if anything is good or bad, wet or dry, sweet or bitter if one does not try them? Jonas does it and gets his assurance that he is very heterosexual. This crucial scene is handled elegantly by the sensitive, talented director Joachim Lafosse, and well acted by the young protagonist. Some viewers slandered the film, it is understandable, because the subject matter is taboo, and frankly, there is no other film like it. For those who think this work of art is perverted or abusive, I suggest to watch the end of the movie carefully, because the answer to this positive, rare and moving story it's there in the last 2-minutes, in the last 2 cuts of the film.

ynoel-2 It is said (and I have noted to be true) that people see in other people, in works of Art etc. or anything subjective, what THEY actually are. They project their own being, or shortcomings or fears or hidden secrets. That the author of the review below attack this sensitive film is such a disproportionately virulent (and plainly erroneous) way has said much more about him as a person than he probably intended to express. And to call a 17 year-old a 'child' (and who is in his full legal right to consent to any relationship he wishes to pursue, protected by the law itself) is so absurd as to suggest the author had a North American education. To see rape, to see perverted seduction in what is most obviously all but that, would be an alarm calm for anyone reading his review on this subtle film. What is sure is that with such a serious imbalance within him to feel the need to explode in this way, I would make sure no one below 18 walk near him. We have many recent examples of those who shouted far above the rest, and ended up being caught with their pants down, and I don't mean figuratively. His review reads like an open book of serious personal issues, as yet unresolved, and if his review serves any purpose it would be to help him seek assistance. More to do with the film now; it is of course slow and bleak like many European films, but like many European films dare to recount real life, real subtleties, real complexities of relationships that much cinema avoids - and that many like the author mentioned above would like to push so deep into (their subconscious) perversion as to ...create a perversion in itself, quite aside from the what the filmmaker made. It somehow makes them feel they have crushed their demon for a while - little to do with a review.